My grandmother, Anna (Chana) (nee BURG) SCHARF, her brothers, Herman, Isidore,
and Peretz, her sisters, Mollie (KRITZ), Sophie (ROSENBERG), and Yetta
(SINGER), and their parents, Mordechai and Sosia, left Staneshti de Zhos (Unter
Stanestie) beginning in 1906, to seek a new life in America.

They reached the shores of the "Goldena Medina" to discover that their old
struggles had turned into new ones. World War I and the depression brought
difficulties to the Burgs and their many landsmen who had joined them in the
search for a better life.

As with many of the new immigrants, they brought with them an inner strength to
pull them through the hardships. But even more, they had each other. From this
basic understanding that they needed to help one another (and eventually their
landsleit who remained in Staneshti or moved to Palestine/Israel, the Unter
Stanestie Bukowinaer Circle, Inc. emerged in 1930.

As the self-appointed family historian, I take special pride in the role my
paternal great uncles played in the birth and growth of this organization. It
was founded for friendship, mutual support, and tzedekah. The members were
Zionists, supportting the State of Israel and their relatives and friends who
lived there (including a first cousin of the BURG family--Yitschak BURG of
Kibbutz Massada, who documented the family history).

The Twentieth Anniversary and Banquet journal of the Unter Stanestie
(Staneshti) Bukowinaer Circle includes a page of poetry written in beautiful
Hebrew by my paternal great grandfather. As I read this piece and other
original manuscripts of his, I was moved to see that a Jew who was steeped
mostly in the Yiddish culture of Eastern Europe, and whose main use of Hebrew
was in prayer, could write such beautiful poetry in Hebrew.

My father, Arthur SCHARF, and his sister, Ruth SCHARF SIEGEL, recall with
loving memories the work of their uncles Herman and Isidore in the creation and
development of this landsmanschaft. (They never could understand how their
uncles earned a living…because all they ever did was go to meetings.)

I did not inherit millions of dollars or beautiful jewels. But I did manage to
"inherit" from my father a slim paperback volume that contains a piece of my
heritage. I was pleased to make available to other Jewish family historians the
information in the journal--particularly lists of the members and lists of
Holocaust survivors and their family members and friends who met a tragic death
at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. May their memory be blessed.

This anniversary book, published in the wake of the Holocaust, contains a list
of those who perished as well as survivors. Since the book was published in
1950 - well before Shapira's Die Juden in Unter Stanestie, I would venture to
say that these lists are in all likelihood more accurate, since they were
compiled by a group of people closer to the actual historical events. By the
time of Shapira's book, many of the witnesses would have already passed away.

I have recorded things exactly as they were printed - in other words, not quite
in alphabetical order. The original is in English, so no translation was needed.

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